The Song of the Quarkbeast, Page 3

  ‘I wonder what did happen to it?’ said Tiger as we followed the sorcerers and the dog across the field, over a stile and a smaller road, then into a small wood.

  ‘Happened to what?’

  ‘My luggage,’ replied Tiger, who wasn’t yet done on his missing luggage problem. ‘Luckily, it didn’t have anything in it. I don’t have any possessions. In fact, the luggage was my only possession. It was what I was found in.’

  Owning very little or even being found in a red suitcase with castors and a separate internal pocket for toiletries was not unusual when you consider Tiger’s foundling heritage. He had been abandoned on the steps of the Sisterhood of the Blessed Lady of the Lobster, the same as me, then sold into servitude with Kazam Mystical Arts until he was eighteen. I still had two years to run before I could apply for citizenship; Tiger had six. We didn’t complain because this was how things were. There were a lot of orphans owing to the hideously wasteful and annoyingly frequent Troll Wars, and hotels, fast-food joints and laundries needed the cheap labour that foundlings could provide. Of the twenty-three kingdoms, duchies, socialist collectives, public limited companies and ramshackle potentates that made up the Ununited Kingdoms, only three of them had outlawed the trade in foundlings. Unluckily for us, the Kingdom of Snodd was not one of them.

  ‘When we have some surplus crackle we’ll retrieve your luggage,’ I said, knowing how valuable any connection to parents was to a foundling. I had been left on the front seat of the Volkswagen Beetle that I drove today, and little would part me from my car.

  ‘It’s okay,’ he said, demonstrating the selflessness and humility with which most foundlings comforted themselves. ‘It can wait.’

  We followed Mawgon, Full Price and the memory-dog out of the small wood and through a gate into an abandoned farm. Brambles, creeper and hazel saplings had grown over many of the red-brick buildings, and rusty machinery stood in abandoned barns with dilapidated roofs. No one had been here for a while. The memory-dog ran across the yard and stopped at an abandoned water well, where it wagged its tail excitedly. As soon as Lady Mawgon caught up with it she made a flourish and the dog started to chase its tail until it was nothing more than a golden blur, then it changed back to the ring again, which continued spinning on a flagstone with a curious humming noise.

  Lady Mawgon picked up the ring and gave it back to me. It was still warm and smelled of puppies. Full Price pulled an old door off the wellhead, and we all gazed down the brick-lined well. Far below in the inky blackness I could see a small circle of sky with the shape of our heads as our reflections stared back up at us.

  ‘It’s in there,’ she said.

  ‘And there it should stay,’ replied Full Price, who still wasn’t happy. ‘I can feel something wrong.’

  ‘How wrong?’ I asked.

  ‘Seventh circle of Wrong. I can sense the lingering aftertaste of an old spell, too.’

  There was silence for a moment as everyone took this in, and a coldness seemed to emanate up from the well.

  ‘I can sense something, too,’ said Perkins, ‘like that feeling you get when someone you don’t like is looking over your shoulder.’

  ‘It doesn’t want to be found,’ said Full Price.

  ‘No,’ said Perkins, ‘someone doesn’t want it to be found.’

  They all looked at one another. Missing objects are one thing, but purposefully hidden objects quite another.

  ‘I can think of five thousand good reasons to find it,’ said Lady Mawgon, ‘so find it we shall.’

  She put her hand above the well in order to draw the ring from the mud below, but instead of the ring rising, her hand was tugged sharply downwards.

  ‘It’s been anchored and resists my command,’ she said with a voice tinged more with intrigue than concern. ‘Mr Price?’

  Full joined her and they both attempted to lift the ring from the well. But no sooner had they started the lift than a low rumble seemed to come from the earth beneath our feet and the bricks that made up the low wall started to shift. Tiger and I took a step back but the others simply watched as an old and long-forgotten enchantment moved the bricks into a new configuration, sealing the wellhead tight. Within a few seconds there was only a solid brick cap.

  ‘Fascinating,’ said Lady Mawgon, for this was in effect a battle of wits between sorcerers – just separated by thirty years. Whatever enchantment had been left to keep the ring hidden, it was still powerful.

  ‘I vote we walk away now,’ said Full Price.

  ‘It’s a challenge,’ retorted Lady Mawgon excitedly, ‘and I like a challenge.’

  She was more animated than I had seen her for a while, and within a few minutes had formulated a plan.

  ‘Right, then,’ she said, ‘listen closely. Mr Price is going to prise open the wellhead using a standard Magnaflux Reversal. How long can you keep it open, Mr Price?’

  Full Price sucked air in through his teeth thoughtfully.

  ‘About thirty seconds – maximum forty.’

  ‘Should be enough. But since the ring is resisting a lift we will have to send someone down to get it. I will levitate them head downwards to the bottom of the well, where they will retrieve the ring. You, Mr Perkins, will channel crackle to Mr Price and myself. Can you do that?’

  ‘To the best of my ability, ma’am,’ replied Perkins happily. Lady Mawgon had never asked him to assist her before.

  ‘He doesn’t have a licence,’ I said, ‘you know what the penalty could be.’

  ‘Who’s going to snitch on him?’ she retorted. ‘You?’

  ‘I can’t allow it,’ I said.

  ‘It’s Perkins’ call,’ said Mawgon, looking at me angrily. ‘Mr Perkins?’

  Perkins looked at me and then Lady Mawgon.

  ‘I’ll do it.’

  I didn’t say anything more as we all knew the consequences of operating without a licence were extremely unpleasant. The relationship between the populace and Mystical Art Practitioners had always been one of suspicion, a relationship not helped by a regrettable episode in the nineteenth century when a wayward sorcerer who called himself ‘Blix the Thoroughly Barbarous’ thought he could use his powers to achieve world domination. He was eventually defeated, but the damage to magic’s reputation had been deep and far reaching. Bureaucracy now dominated the industry with a sea of paperwork and licensing requirements. Reinventing sorcery as a useful and safe commodity akin to electricity had taken two centuries and wasn’t done yet. Once lost, trust is a difficult thing to regain. But I said nothing more. I was there to remind them of the rules, not to police them.

  ‘Good,’ said Lady Mawgon, ‘then let’s begin.’

  ‘Wait a minute,’ said Tiger, who had just figured out that the ‘going down a well head first’ plan doubtless included him as he was lightest, ‘it’s going to be as dark as the belly of a whale down there.’

  I passed him a glass globe from my bag, just one of the many useful objects that I liked to have with me on assignment.

  ‘It runs off sarcasm,’ I said, handing it to him.

  ‘Great,’ he replied, and the globe lit up brightly.4

  ‘You’ll also need this,’ I told him as I tied a toddler’s shoe around his neck. When done, I spoke into the matching shoe I held in my hand.

  ‘Can you hear me?’

  ‘Yes,’ he replied, ‘I can hear you. Do I have to go down a well upside down while being sarcastic with a shoe tied around my neck?’

  ‘You could use a conch5 to talk,’ said Perkins helpfully, before he added less than helpfully: ‘only we haven’t got any.’

  ‘And you’d look pretty daft with a conch tied to your head,’ added Full Price.

  ‘Like I am so not worried about looking a twit,’ said Tiger, and the globe went up to full brightness again.

  ‘You’re going to have to find the ring within thirty seconds,’ announced Lady Mawgon, ‘and since it might be tricky to find in the rank, fetid, disease-ridden muddy water, you’ll need my help.’


  ‘You’re coming down too?’

  ‘Good Lord, no. What do you think I am? An idiot?’

  ‘I’m not sure it would be healthy to answer that question,’ replied Tiger carefully.

  ‘Answer it how you want – I’d ignore you anyway. Here.’

  She handed him a neat leather glove and told him to put it on while she placed its pair on herself. Like toddlers’ shoes and conches, gloves have left-and-right symmetry and can thus be amicably linked to one another to work together while separated by physical distance. Lady Mawgon clenched and unclenched her fist as Tiger’s hand did the same. She revolved her arm around in the air and the paired glove copied her actions perfectly while Tiger stared at his arm and hand. He was, to all intents and purposes, now partly Lady Mawgon. Better still, the gloves were feedback enabled. Lady Mawgon would be able to feel what Tiger was feeling.

  ‘How’s that?’ asked Lady Mawgon.

  ‘Peculiar,’ he replied. ‘What if I can’t find the blasted ring in thirty seconds?’

  ‘Then the well will close with you inside and it’s entirely possible you’ll spend the rest of your life at the bottom of a deep well with only bacteria and leeches for company, then utter darkness when your sarcasm runs out.’

  ‘I’m not so sure I want to do this any more.’

  ‘Don’t be such a crybaby,’ chided Lady Mawgon. ‘If our roles were reversed and you were the skilled practitioner and I was the worthless foundling with the silly name, I’d be down that hole like an actor after a free lunch.’

  Tiger looked across at me and raised an eyebrow.

  ‘You don’t have to do this if you don’t want to,’ I told him.

  ‘Lady Mawgon is relating a worst-case scenario,’ said Full Price in a soothing voice. ‘We’ll call the fire brigade if we can’t reopen the well. The longest you’ll be trapped is an hour.’

  ‘Then how could I possibly refuse?’ replied Tiger grumpily. ‘Let’s get on with it.’

  Lady Mawgon and Full Price took up their stances, index fingers at the ready. At the count of three Full Price pointed at the wellhead and the bricks opened again, revealing the deep hole in the ground. At the same time, Lady Mawgon pointed at Tiger and my young assistant was lifted from the ground, turned upside down and plunged head first down the well. We peered over to look in. It was all dark until Tiger said ‘Gosh, what super fun this is’ and the globe lit up to reveal a brick-lined well all the way down. After a few moments Tiger’s voice came through the shoe saying that he was at the bottom and that it was wet and muddy and very smelly and all he could see was an old bicycle and a shopping trolley.

  ‘They get everywhere,’ I said. ‘Let Lady Mawgon have a feel around.’

  Mawgon already was. With one hand keeping Tiger floating a few inches above the water level, the other was grasping, feeling and churning above her head, while her other glove on Tiger’s hand sixty feet below did the same thing. Tiger kept us informed of what was going on while interspersing his speech with some top-quality sarcasm.

  ‘Fifteen seconds gone,’ I said, staring at my watch.

  ‘I can feel something odd,’ said Perkins, who was standing to one side, doing little except directing the ambient crackle more efficiently into Mawgon and Price, in the same way as a guttering directs rain into a storm drain.

  ‘Me too,’ said Full Price, eyes fixed intently on the wellhead and his index fingers beginning to vibrate with the effort. ‘Look at that.’

  I looked down the well. Before, only the top course of bricks had closed over to prevent us getting in, but now other bricks were starting to pop out from the well sides all the way down. The well was starting to constrict.

  ‘We need Tiger out,’ I said to Lady Mawgon, who was still feeling about above her head, eyes closed as she searched the muddy bottom of the well.

  ‘Nearly,’ she muttered.

  ‘Twenty-five seconds.’

  ‘What’s going on?’ came Tiger’s voice over the toddler’s shoe.

  ‘You’ll be out soon, Tiger, I promise.’

  The bricks were starting to move inwards with increasing speed, and brick dust, soil and earwigs were tumbling down the well. Full Price was sweating with the effort and shaking badly.

  ‘I . . . can’t . . . hold . . . it!’ he managed to mutter between clenched teeth.

  ‘The walls,’ came Tiger’s tremulous voice, ‘they’re moving in!’

  ‘Lady Mawgon,’ I said as calmly as I could. ‘It’s only a ring. We can leave it be.’

  ‘Almost there,’ she said, feeling around with her gloved hand in increased desperation.

  ‘Thirty seconds,’ I said as I stared at my watch. ‘That’s it. Abort.’

  She continued, undeterred.

  ‘Mawgon!’ yelled Full Price, who was now shaking so hard his index fingers were a blur. ‘Get the lad out NOW!’

  But Mawgon was unmoved by our entreaties. She was so intent on finding her quarry that nothing mattered – least of all a foundling being crushed to death by an ancient spell sixty feet below ground. The well had shrunk to half its size by now, and Full Price was crying out in pain as he tried to keep the spell at bay. Perkins was shaking with the effort, too, and Lady Mawgon was still wildly looking around with Tiger’s arm below when several things happened at once. Lady Mawgon cried out, Perkins fell over and the well shut with a teeth-jarring thump that we felt through the ground. I looked at my watch. Price had kept it open exactly forty-three seconds. Of Tiger there was no sign; the well was now a solid plug of brick, and down below, somewhere, Tiger was part of it.

  There was silence. I couldn’t think of anything to say. Full Price and Perkins were both on their hands and knees in the dirt coughing after their exertions, but Lady Mawgon was just standing there, her gloved hand half open as if clasped around something. She might have found something, but it didn’t matter. The price had been too great.

  I felt my head grow hot as anger welled up inside me. I might have boiled over then as I have a terrible temper once riled, but a small voice brought me back from the edge.

  ‘Hey, Jenny,’ went the voice from the toddler’s shoe, ‘I can see Zambini Towers from here.’

  It was Tiger’s voice. I frowned, and then looked up. High above us was a small figure no bigger than a dot free-falling back towards earth. Lady Mawgon had brought Tiger out of the closing well so rapidly that we hadn’t seen him pass, and he had carried on and up, and was now on his way back down. I looked across at Lady Mawgon, who winked at me, and opened her gloved hand wide. She swiftly moved a hayrick twenty feet to the right, where Tiger landed with a thump a few seconds later, and at the same time she caught a muddy object in her gloved hand, which she then passed to me.

  ‘There,’ she said with a triumphant grin, ‘Mawgon delivers.’

  * * *

  1 She was referring to Jennifer’s connection with Dragons. Of the only two Dragons on the planet, she knew them both well enough for them to return her calls. Dragons usually don’t.

  2 The moolah is the unit of currency in the Kingdom of Snodd. One hundred Herefordian washers = 1 moolah, which is roughly equivalent to the spondoolip, at 2007 exchange rates.

  3 The technical term is a Canis mnemonicus, or ‘mnemonic hound’. The ability of dogs to find things has a long tradition, and was exploited quite early on by sorcerers.

  4 The correct term for this is ‘sarcoluminescence’ and it efficiently converts emotion to power, one of the central pillars of magic. It is one of the first spells to be taught to trainees.

  5 Conch: the shell of a sea snail that lends itself well to medium-range communication. Giant clams have been used (and still are) for transcontinental message transmission. Toddlers’ shoes have a range of about sixty yards, but are a lot lighter to carry than conches, and not as delicate.

  Negative energy

  * * *

  ‘That was fun in a panicky, exciting, soil-your-underwear kind of way,’ said Tiger as he walked up to us covered
in a mixture of mud and straw. ‘I didn’t, in case you’re interested,’ he added. ‘The smell is the mud from the bottom of the well.’

  Full Price was the first to voice what we all felt.

  ‘Cutting it a bit fine, Daphne?’

  ‘I knew precisely how long he had,’ she said. ‘Master Prawns was never in danger.’

  ‘I don’t agree,’ I replied, pointing to where a lock of Tiger’s hair had been caught in the bricks as they closed upon him as he shot out. ‘I’ll ask you not to place the staff in danger, Lady Mawgon.’

  She stared at me and took a step closer.

  ‘You admonish me?’ she said slowly and with great deliberation. ‘You, who are not worthy to even carry my bag? We’ll see where the land lies when the Great Zambini returns, my girl. Prawns was in slight jeopardy, yes, but as an employee of Kazam he must assume the risks as well as the advantages.’

  ‘And what would those advantages be?’ asked Tiger, who clearly thought he could be impertinent, given his recent close shave. ‘I’d be very interested in knowing.’

  ‘Isn’t it obvious?’ she replied. ‘Working with the greatest practitioners of the Mystical Arts currently on the earth.’

  ‘Aside from that,’ replied Tiger, as that was something we could all agree upon.

  ‘What else does there need to be? Clean my glove before you return it to me. I just earned the company five thousand moolah. You should all be mind-numbingly grateful.’

  ‘Why would anyone leave such a spell to keep a ring hidden?’ asked Perkins, artfully moving the conversation to where it should be going.

  There was silence, as no one had any good answer. I looked at the small mud-covered terracotta pot Lady Mawgon had handed me. It was about the size of a pear and was nothing remarkable – the sort of thing you might use to hold mixed spice. I put my finger in the neck and felt around in the muddy gloop until I felt something and pulled out the gold ring, still shiny and perfect after thirty years down the well. It was a large ring, for a large finger, but was otherwise unremarkable. No inscription or anything, just a simple band of gold. Full Price put his hand near it then hurriedly withdrew it.